Tories committ to nuclear and renewable energy

The Conservatives have unveiled their Green Paper on energy, called 'Rebuilding Security, Conservative Energy Policy For an Uncertain World'.

As with all major political announcements Curtin&Co has undertaken to produce a full analysis of this for our clients, a version of which is on our website. We have noted several common themes of Conservative policy coming out of this paper, which will form the manifesto for the Tories at the next general election.

The 'localism' theme is prominent, but only when referring to renewable energy. On-shore windfarms will be supported by a new Conservative government and local authorities will be encouraged to embrace this technology by retaining the business rates for each turbine developed for six years. Wind energy providers will also be obliged to provide subsidised energy for those living close to a wind farm, though this doesn't appear in much detail (probably because preparing such a subsidy is pretty much impossible at the moment).

But the localism theme stalls somewhat when big infrastructure issues are concerned. The Infrastructure Planning Commission, of who's deputy chairman was the guest speaker at our December Christmas event in London, will be predictably abolished. That may be bad news for the graphic designers and webmsters preparing the IPC's livery and corporate image, but the expertise of the IPC will be retained. It appears that far from trusting local authorities to make their own decisions on clean coal/carbon capture power plants and nuclear facilities these major decisions will still be made centrally, albeit not by an unelected quango but by the Planning Inspectorate.

Other highlights, such as creating a Green Investment Bank, are fairly apolitical in their nature. The Chancellor announced such a policy in yesterday's budget, so we can be assured that whoever wins the election will focus on this, though doubtless the detail will be different between the major parties.

I suppose the big talking point about this paper is how determined the Tories are about nuclear power. Given that there is an election in the offing and the form of energy generation is almost universally despised amongst green pressure groups it is nice to see such a commitment. Whether this outbreak of decisiveness will cost the party any seats and, perhaps, even rob them of an overall majority is anyones guess.

We've Got The Beef, Now What's The Recipe

Well here it is. The Conservative Green Paper, Open Source Planning, has been published. With the party's opinion poll lead narrowing we may yet see the recycling bin bulging with this on May 7th, but we must assume that this is unlikely. This Green Paper will be the basis of planning policy for the next few years.

Much of the document we already knbow. Previous papers have identified the need to do away with regional planning targets, development agencies, inspectors and the like. This paper confirms this. The days of reaching for the acronym guide to figure out PPS3, or RSS, or LDF will seemingly end.

Well until the next guide is published!

We all know that what is good in opposition, however, rarely makes it good in government. Some headlining measures include:

- Incentives for local authorities to set their own affordable housing target. The carrot will be a 125% retention of the council tax for each affordable unit built for six years

- Extension of delegated 'brownfield' land to include areas previously used for agricultural purposes

- Limited planning appeals against local development to just two grounds; that the correct procedure was not followed and that the decision was in direct contravention of the relevant local plan.

The localism agenda, which is underpinning pretty much every element of Conservative thinking right now, will bring in fairly unreasonable demands for whole communities to be involved in planning applications. Many people in such communities simply will not do this. The only interested party when making comment on a planning application is, generally, those opposing a development.

The next government, if it is Conservative, will undoubtedly refine this paper. Green Papers rarely duplicate themselved into White Papers. One bright shining hope is that the next intake of Tory MPs will undoubtedly include several current and former councillors.

Expect a lot of time spent on the committee stage of any future Planning bill!